


The Wedding

by vegashoods



Category: Glee
Genre: AU, First Meeting, M/M, Wedding, best man! kurt, rachel & jesse's wedding, wedding planner! blaine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 16:15:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12369414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegashoods/pseuds/vegashoods
Summary: Blaine is in for the challenge of his life--preparing Rachel Berry's wedding. But when he meets the charming, alluring best man, they get to talking, and things get interesting.





	The Wedding

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I'm always writing depressing stories, so here's something a little more light and upbeat :)

Rachel Berry was the bride that everyone had warned him about. 

When he’d started his career, Blaine hadn’t been blind to the fact that some brides would be more particular than others. He’d known that some women wanted every detail of their special day to be perfect, down to the last meticulous salad fork placement. And he’d understood that. They had paid good money for a good wedding planner to make sure that everything was flawless, and Blaine had believed he was up for the job. 

But Rachel was different.

Blaine had spent what felt like years mapping out every detail of this wedding, planning for every possible outcome and having a solution for anything that could go wrong. Helping Rachel pick a color scheme had taken two weeks all on its own, and choosing a venue for the reception had proved to be next to impossible. Her fiancé, Jesse, was no help at all in calming her down or reassuring her. He was, if anything, more of a perfectionist than she was, though he left the planning up to her and then shot down her ideas the second Blaine finally got her to decide on something. It was hard, exhausting work, and Blaine had thought more than once that he wasn’t going to be able to finish this job on time. He was barely sleeping, snatching bites of food when he had a second away from the nightmare couple, spending every second of his life perfecting the masterpiece that was to be the Berry/St. James wedding. 

“This seating chart is all wrong,” Rachel was saying now, hands on her hips, staring down at the diagram Blaine had spent three hours creating. “Burt and Carole can’t be in the second row. What if they think I’m taking them for granted, or like I don’t care if they’re at my wedding? What was I  _ thinking _ ?”

“We decided last week that the first row was reserved for family,” Blaine reminded her in the calmest voice he could manage. Every time he blinked, it became harder for him to keep his eyes open; he wondered when the last time he’d had a full night’s sleep was. “Besides, it’s too late to change it now. The wedding is  _ tomorrow _ , Rachel. It’s two A.M.”

Rachel considered this for a moment and then promptly ignored it. She had a bad habit of doing that. “They  _ are _ family,” she insisted. “And do you really think my family is going to take up a whole row? It’s just my dads and grandparents. They won’t take up a whole row. Burt and Carole, they’re like--like my sort-of parents, and Kurt’s in the wedding, so they should sit in the front.”

Blaine was finding it very hard to focus on Rachel’s words when she was standing in front of him in fuzzy, hot pink pajama pants with some kind of green facial cream smothered over her skin. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering for the thousandth time why he had agreed to meet her this late in the first place. “If the parents of every single bridesmaid and groomsman sat in the front row, it would be too long and it would throw off the whole schematic,” Blaine explained. “I’m sure that Kurt will be fine if they sit in the second row.”

He had unofficially met Kurt once, in passing, while Rachel struggled to decide between purple or red for the colors. Kurt had been the one to convince her that red flattered most of the wedding party better, and it was more of a celebratory color than purple (Blaine had already tried telling her this, but for some reason she wouldn’t take  _ his _ advice). Rachel had introduced Kurt as her best friend from high school, her roommate from college, and her fashion advisor for the rest of her life. He was some sort of designer for  _ Vogue _ , Blaine thought, though he’d been too distracted by how drop-dead gorgeous Kurt was to pay much attention. He was the best man (it seemed like Jesse didn’t have a preference, and besides, Rachel got what Rachel wanted), but Blaine never saw him again after that day.

Not that it mattered. Blaine didn’t allow himself to get involved with members of the wedding party. And Kurt probably wasn’t available, anyway--

“Hello?” Fingers snapping inches away from his nose brought Blaine back to the present, daydreams of Kurt forgotten for the moment. Rachel sat in front of him, eyes wide, the mask on her face coming dangerously close to dripping onto his seating chart. “Are you even listening to me? I said that the  _ point _ of an outdoor wedding is so that we can change the seating around.”

“It really isn’t,” Blaine told her. He’d fought against the outdoor ceremony from the start--it always, somehow, ended in disaster, whether it be the bride’s veil flying away or an unpredicted rainstorm coming in at the last second. But his opinion was only valued for so long before Rachel decided that her way was better and went ahead with it anyway. “There are a set number of chairs in each row. If we add more chairs to the front row, we have to take them from somewhere else. And then this diagram will be completely ruined and it’ll look like a tornado came through the venue. Do you want an ugly seating chart to take away from how gorgeous you’re going to look tomorrow?”

Rachel sat back and smiled, and Blaine knew that this battle was won. He’d discovered early on that the best way to convince Rachel of something was to tell her that it would mean more attention on her. Blaine was willing to bet she’d been the head diva of at least one club during high school. She seemed like someone who enjoyed having the spotlight to herself. “You’re right,” she said, pushing her chair back and standing. Blaine tried not to look too excited at the prospect of her leaving. “What would I do without you, Blaine? You know so much about everything.”

“Not everything,” he said, smiling despite the fact that he was so tired he was about to fall asleep on top of his meticulous seating chart. “Just weddings. Now go home and get some sleep, okay? You don’t want dark circles under your eyes when you’re getting your picture taken.”

She nodded like he had revealed the secrets of the universe, mouth open in amazement and eyebrows raised. “Thank you so much,” she said. “Seriously, thank you. I  _ told _ Jesse it wasn’t a mistake to hire you.”

Blaine tried his best not to be insulted and showed her to the door with as much grace and professionalism as he could manage without tripping over the carpet. Once Rachel was safely outside and on her way home, Blaine rolled up his diagrams and tucked them away, hoping that they were worth the work he’d put into them. He was good at his job, but this was his hardest case yet, and it had drained him to the point where he wasn’t quite sure how he was functioning. He dropped into bed that night and fell asleep within seconds, and his dreams were filled with shifting seating charts and a pair of blue eyes that he couldn’t get out of his head. 

 

The wedding went off without a hitch. 

It was a beautiful ceremony; the venue Rachel had insisted on was beautiful, outside the city but not so far that it was a hassle to travel. The skies were clear and bright, the wedding party looked stunning in their red-themed ensembles, and no one threw a fit over their place in the seating chart. If Blaine had been expecting cold feet from Rachel, he’d been wrong. She had been glowing the whole time, her smile huge and genuine, and she had made her vows without hesitation. Blaine had always been jealous of these couples--the ones who seemed to be designed for each other, whose love was so obvious and real that it was a heartache to look at it. After he’d graduated college still single, with no past serious relationships to speak of, he’d started wondering if he would ever find a love like that. He tried to put those thoughts out of his mind for the time being so he could be happy for Rachel and Jesse, though it proved to be difficult when Kurt looked as stunning as he did in a suit.

Once they were at the reception, Blaine’s job was relatively easy. All he had to do was make sure that everyone sat at their assigned tables, that dinner happened on time and without problems, and that speeches and the dance stayed on schedule. He stuck to the shadows, trying to remind himself that he was working even though he was almost compelled to strike up a conversation with the nearest person at all times. Blaine had always been social, and he could only go for so long without human contact. 

Which was why it was so hard to stay focused when someone tried to start a conversation with him.

Especially when that someone looked so incredible it was hard for Blaine to wrap his head around.

“Everything went well today,” Kurt said, leaning against the wall next to Blaine and idly twirling a champagne flute in his hand. “I’m impressed. Rachel’s demands were steep, but you were up for the challenge.”

Blaine shrugged and looked at the floor to avoid eye contact--it was the only way he could think of to maintain his composure. “It’s not over yet,” he said. “And it’s my job to deal with steep demands, even ones like Rachel’s. But thank you.”

“You look exhausted,” Kurt noted. He extended his glass to Blaine, slender fingers curled delicately around the stem. His cheeks were flushed with alcohol already--Blaine couldn’t blame him. Having Rachel as a best friend was sure to have its stresses. “Champagne?”

Blaine smiled politely and shook his head. “Not while I’m on the clock,” he said. 

Kurt smirked and leaned in closer, and when Blaine finally looked up at him, there was a glint in his eyes that was hard to identify. “Well, when are you off the clock?”

“Are you offering to buy me a drink?” The words surprised Blaine even as they came out of his mouth; he was outgoing, but not the type to flirt with a complete stranger.

Or a member of the wedding party.

Or the  _ best man _ .

While he was  _ working _ .

But he supposed that exceptions could be made, especially when Kurt reached up to loosen his tie and open the top buttons on his dress shirt. 

“Maybe,” Kurt said, his lips twisting into a smile. “But you’ll have to convince me.”

Blaine raised an eyebrow, forgetting for the moment that he was supposed to be supervising the event and finding himself completely intrigued with the shape of Kurt’s mouth and the shocking blue of his eyes. “How?”

“Well,” said Kurt, drawing out the word, his eyes shining. “First, I’ll need your number.” His phone was out and pressed into Blaine’s hand before Blaine could even process what was going on, and he punched in his phone number almost on autopilot. He was still in disbelief that this was even happening. Why him? Out of all the guys that Kurt could have chosen to talk to, why Blaine? He didn’t think lowly of himself--he knew that he was attractive, and he knew that other people knew it too--but someone like Kurt didn’t usually get with someone like Blaine. It was too much chemistry, too much tension, too much passion. Blaine knew from experience how it ended up when he dated guys like that. 

But he had a good feeling about it this time.

“Now what?” Blaine asked, swallowing subconsciously as Kurt took another step toward him so now they were close enough to touch, close enough that Blaine could see the hazed,  drunk look in his eyes and smell his soap, something fruity and mixed with sandalwood that was driving Blaine crazy. 

“Now,” Kurt whispered, his lips almost brushing Blaine’s ear, “we have to figure out if we’d work well together.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Blaine shifted uncomfortably--his dress pants were getting tighter by the second, and he could feel his heart hammering against his chest, hard and fast and desperate. He’d never been this unprofessional at a wedding before, and he was sure that it was going to haunt him in the future, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He also didn’t want to. 

“Let’s just say that it involves you, and me, and a hotel room, and a lot of booze,” Kurt said. “And some very poor decisions that will lead to a very fun night.”

_ Oh, God _ . Blaine closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. He could feel his composure slipping, could feel his careful work personality cracking and breaking, could feel his inhibitions and worries disappearing second by second. “I have to work until everyone leaves,” he said. “And that’ll be a while.”

Kurt shook his head. “You obviously don’t know Rachel,” he said. “She’s the biggest drama queen you’ll ever meet, and she loves attention, but she can only take so much before it’s not enough and she has to find something else to satisfy herself. As soon as the speeches are done and she gets her first dance, she’ll stick around for about ten minutes and then she and Jesse will leave. And you know what happens when the bride leaves the building.”

Blaine did know what happened. He’d seen it more times than he could count--the bride and groom deciding that they wanted to spend their wedding night alone together instead of packed into a crowd of distant friends and relatives they never spoke to. After the couple’s grand exit, almost everyone chose to follow them. There were one or two drunk uncles left behind, but they would be easy enough to convince to go home. The idea was so tempting, within Blaine’s reach, and once it became an option, it wouldn’t leave his mind.

The next hour was a series of the lowest points in Blaine’s career history. He pushed up dinner by half an hour (no one knew the difference, anyway; nobody checked their watches at a wedding), followed by the fastest ushering through the buffet line he had ever accomplished. As soon as everyone was back to their seats, Blaine was shoving a microphone into the hand of the maid of honor (a pretty latina girl named Santana who looked like she might either kiss or kill anyone who got too close to her), making up some excuse about how people preferred earlier speeches. She didn’t have anything extravagant prepared, and she spent more time pointing out Rachel’s flaws than reminiscing on happy memories, but Rachel didn’t seem to mind. (Blaine didn’t mind, either; it only meant that he was that much closer to leaving), and then it was Kurt’s turn.

At this point, Kurt had found himself another flute of champagne to join the three sitting in front of him, and he looked more than a little tipsy as he stood and accepted the microphone from Santana. He giggled and swayed slightly at the beginning, but his expression became more serious when he realized that people were actually paying attention to him. For someone who’d consumed a large amount of alcohol in a small amount of time, he made a nice speech, though he only mentioned Jesse twice. Blaine was starting to get the impression that the wedding party was made up of Rachel’s friends and no one else--Kurt and Santana, the smiling dark-skinned girl who had sung a beautiful rendition of a Whitney Houston song earlier, the slender blonde girl with high cheekbones and a habit of telling people her boyfriend was in the air force, and the girl who had introduced herself as Tina and then immediately puked all over the floor were all from Rachel’s high school. Jesse wasn’t even paying attention to Kurt, anyway, but he was completely absorbed in staring at Rachel, which Blaine thought was an acceptable excuse.

By the end of Kurt’s speech, Rachel was crying, which meant that it was a resounding success. Blaine was impressed--he’d seen several drunk speeches, and most of the time they ended in awkward laughter and forced applause. He was beginning to wonder how many other little things about Kurt would surprise him, and discovered that he was looking forward to finding out.

Luckily, dinner was a fast affair, and first and last dances whirled by so fast Blaine hardly noticed them. As predicted, Rachel and Jesse left just minutes after their emotional first dance, and a flood of guests flocked out the doors after them. At the end of it all, Blaine was left with three groups of chattering relatives, a few wandering, drunk girls, Tina, and Kurt, who had been smiling at Blaine from across the room all night and who was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. 

“Told you,” Kurt said a couple minutes later, as he helped Blaine dismantle the table decorations that had taken ages to set up. “I’ll give it twenty minutes, and then we’re out of here.”

Blaine smirked. Technically, he was still on duty, but he considered the time after the bride left to be the time when he wasn’t required to be on full alert. He was already starting to relax into what he could sense was going to be the best night he’d had in a long, long time. 

“ _ We, _ huh?” he asked. “Interesting.”

“I wouldn’t stick around to help clean up a wedding for just  _ anybody _ ,” Kurt said. 

“Right. Only the guys you intend to screw later.”

Blaine immediately paused and clapped a hand over his mouth, horrified at his own words. He hadn’t meant to say them out loud, or at least not in such a blunt way. “Oh, my God,” he mumbled, his voice muffled by his hand. “I’m so sorry. that--I didn’t mean to say that at all. Jesus.”

He would be lying if he said he hadn’t been expecting Kurt to have a dramatic reaction--to get angry, or cry, or to make a huge speech about how insensitive Blaine was. He seemed the type to feel everything at a higher level than everyone else. But Kurt simply raised one arched eyebrow in surprise and smiled, leaning over the table to reach for a handwritten place card, one of three hundred and fifty. “It’s okay,” he said, and his tone was genuine. “I’ve heard a lot worse. Besides⸺” He turned toward Blaine and dropped his voice to a low whisper⸺ “it’s not like you’re wrong.”

“Oh.” Blaine was known for having a way with words--he had to be, to deal with controlling brides, grooms, families, and whoever else was involved--but now he found himself tongue-tied. He flushed and tried to distract himself by reaching for more place cards, but the task seemed inconsequential and tedious. He paused, carefully avoiding eye contact with Kurt and staring down at his hands instead, and cleared his throat. “Well, I mean, I guess the cleaning could wait a while,” he said. 

When Blaine chanced a look up at Kurt, he was smirking, as if he’d known all along that this would be the outcome and it was only a matter of when Blaine would finally break. “I bet it could,” he agreed. “I also think that the venue could take care of all this stuff and you could call it a night. None of it’s  _ yours _ , is it?”

“Well,  _ no _ , but⸺”

“The venue can take care of it,” Kurt repeated, his tone decisive and final. “The hotel room is calling our names. There’s  _ room service _ , Blaine.”

“Room service changes everything,” Blaine said, grinning, and watched as the two remaining drunk relatives finally stumbled out the door, leaning on each other for support. He knew that he was already convinced, that he was going back to that hotel with Kurt, but he couldn’t make it seem so easy. He was notorious for playing hard-to-get, and he couldn’t tarnish his spotless reputation. “You know, I could get into really big trouble for this. . .”

Kurt shrugged, not bothered by this attempt at fake hesitation. “You’re a charming guy,” he said. “You’ll figure something out. Now  _ come on _ before I decide to spend the night alone, just me in a great big, luxurious hotel room, in that giant bed with no one else in it . . .”

Maybe his reputation would be all right.

Blaine grabbed Kurt’s hand and tugged him out the door without another word, and never looked back.

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
